I’m on a boat…

OK, I’m not ACTUALLY on a boat right now. I’m sitting at the kitchen table of in my in-laws’ lake house. But yesterday…I was on many boats.

Carrie and I are Up North for the Fourth of July. Her parents have an amazing lake house on Elk Lake in northern Michigan. We drove up here on Wednesday night with Scout, Carrie’s sister Meggie, and Meggie’s boyfriend Bryce. Becky (another one of Carrie’s sisters) and her dog Lily are also up here. So it’s a full house. But lots of fun.

Thursday the weather was pretty dodgy, so Bryce, Meggie, Becky, and I went to a bar for lunch and played cards. That evening my in-laws had some people over for what was supposed to be a cookout, but turned into an indoor party featuring beer, wine, delicious steaks, and Catchphrase. Good times!

Friday we headed to the Sleeping Bear Dunes to meet up with Carrie’s cousin Matt and his family. We hiked to the top of one of the dunes, and then had a picnic. It was a lot of fun; we hadn’t seen Matt, his wife, and his son for almost two years. Friday night I went to the infamous Dockside bar with Bryce, Meggie, and Becky…and ended up getting home at 2 AM. This was more due to the fact that as soon as Bryce and I dropped Meggie off at home, Becky needed us to come back and pick her up. And nothing is very close to anything around here…so it was quite an adventure.

Yesterday (Saturday) Carrie I went strawberry-picking, which was kind of a bust, since they had been picked pretty hard the day before. But we did get enough strawberries to (hopefully) make one batch of jam today. Then we swam in the lake (which was pretty chilly…about 68 degrees!) and went on a little cruise around Elk Lake on the speedboat.

As soon as we got back to the house, my father-in-law decided that the winds were just perfect to take the sailboat out. So Bryce, my father in law, and I hopped in the car and scooted over to the Elk Rapids marina, where his sailboat (“Footloose”) is moored. We took the boat out on the bay and had a nice couple hour long sail. The weather was absolutely perfect, although the wind died at exactly five pm, so the last 20 minutes or so we were motoring in. But what a day!

We’ll be coming home on Monday night…so there’s still over a full day of fun ahead! I’ve been taking a lot of pictures, but here are just a couple for fun: